In this paper, we re-examine the role of economic self-interest in shaping people’s attitudes towards immigration, using data from the European Social Survey 2002/2003. Compared to the existing literature, there are two main contributions of the present paper. First, we develop a more powerful test of the hypothesis that a positive relationship between education and attitudes towards immigration reflects economic self-interest in the labour market. Second, we develop an alternative
and more direct test of whether economic self-interest matters
for people’s attitudes towards immigration. We find that while
the "original" relationship between education and attitudes found in the literature is unlikely to reflect economic self-interest, there is considerable evidence of economic self-interest when using the more direct
test.

In a recent paper, García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez [Econ. Edu. Rev. 24 (2005)] apply the generalized IV model of Hausman and Taylor to estimate education returns of wage earners and the self-employed in Portugal and in Spain. Our examination reveals several problems which relate to the validity and documentation of the instrumental variables, as well as the robustness of the results.

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The aim of this paper is to study the determinants of the outcomes of patent applications (withdrawal, refusal or grant). The application process at the European Patent O¢ ce is modelled in three stages, using a Trivariate Probit model with double selectivity correction in order to test whether the applicants patenting history has an eect on the outcome of the current application. I investigate the behavior of the applicant after the patent o¢ ce has established the "state of the art", a precondition to an invention being patentable. The main results are (i) rms with large patents portfolios act following a "trial and error" strategy, by applying for large numbers of patents and thereafter waiting for the patent o¢ ce s nal decision when the expected probability of grant is high, (ii) the technological importance of a patent is a crucial determinant of a successful application grant, (iii) a withdrawal is to be regarded as an expected refusal, since applicants tend to withdraw their applications when there is evidence that the inventions cannot be considered to be novel or to involve an inventive step. patents, intellectual property rights

We set up a theoretical model to analyze the implications of coordination of immigration policies among destination countries. The model contains two types of spill-overs between destination countries: A terms of trade externality and a welfare policy externality. We show that while coordination unambiguously increases welfare of the destination countries, the effects on the level of immigration and on the income distribution of natives are ambiguous. Thus, coordination among destination countries does not necessarily solve the global coordination problem of inoptimally low levels of migration. Coordination, Externalities, Immigration Policy, Spill-overs, Terms of Trade, Welfare.

Is the wage gap between majors in human arts and other fields caused by the education?
If the educational choice is endogenous, the wage gap may instead be caused by selection. We
document that individuals’ educational choice is correlated with that of older students and by
the concentration of women in their high school. Conditional on high school fixed effects, these
characteristics are unlikely to affect post-university wages and are plausible instruments for the
educational choice. Our 2SLS estimates reveal that the gap in returns to education is negligible,
implying that the wage gap is attributable to selection.

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This paper investigates the relationship between self-employment choice, expected earnings, and uncertainty. Several interesting results emerge from our analysis on Danish longitudinal register data: Firstly, self-employed (taxable) personal income bunch at kink points in the tax system since self-employed can retain earnings and thereby transfer income across tax-years. Secondly, expected income level and income variance are important determinants in choice of occupation. Thirdly, men put more emphasis on expected earnings level, while women appears more risk averse, which contribute to explain why fewer women are self-employed. Finally, our results suggest that non-western immigrants are marginalized into self-employment. Occupational choice, self-employment, wage-dierentials, income uncertainty, risk aversion, overcon dence, self-selection, gender dierences.

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We argue that formal schooling and wage-work experience are complementary types
of human capital for entrepreneurs. Strong empirical support is found for this hypothesis
as the interaction term between schooling and actual wage-work experience enters
positively and significantly in a Mincer equation, whereas the effect of schooling in the
absence of wage-work experience is insignificant. These results are extremely robust
towards more flexible specifications, including fixed-effects estimations dealing with
unobserved heterogeneity. For wage workers, the interaction term is negligible, confirming
that the complementarity is a distinct characteristic of entrepreneurial human
capital.

This paper analyses the importance of entrepreneurs for job creation and wage growth. Relying on unique data that covers all plants, firms and individuals in the Danish private sector, we are able to distil a number of different measures of entrepreneurial plants from the set of new plants, including measures that much more precisely capture the "truly new” or "entrepreneurial” plants than in previous studies. Using these data, we find that while new plants in general account for one third of the gross job creation in the economy, entrepreneurial plants are responsible for between 15% and 25% of this, and thus only account for up to 8% of total gross job creation in the economy. However, entrepreneurial plants seem to generate more additional jobs than other new plants in the years following entry. Finally, the jobs generated by entrepreneurial plants are to a large extent low-wage jobs, as they are not found to contribute to the growth in average wages. However, this insight varies across the different types of entrepreneurial plants.

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This paper analyzes educational choices and political support for subsidies to higher education in the presence of a time-consistency problem in income redistribution. There may be political support for so generous subsidization that it motivates the median voter to obtain higher education. As a result of increasing own income, the median voter prefers in the future lower taxes than without higher education. Therefore, the expansion of participation in higher education during the second half of the 20th century may have partly been driven by the aim to limit the political support for overly generous income redistribution. education, time-consistency problem, voting, subsidies to education

In this paper, we use data from the first two rounds of the European Social Survey to analyze the extent to which differences in average attitudes towards immigration across the EU-15 countries may be explained by differences in socioeconomic characteristics and individually perceived consequences of immigration, using an extension of a decomposition technique developed by Fairlie (2005). We find that despite the significant effects of socioeconomic characteristics on attitudes, differences in the distributions of these characteristics
can only explain a modest share of the cross-country variation in average attitudes. A larger part can be explained by differences in perceived consequences of immigration, but the main part is still left unexplained. Apart from providing useful input for policy makers working in the area of immigration policy, this raises a number of questions for further research for which the ESS data can be successfully applied. Attitudes, Immigration, Cross-country differences

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Firms exporting to foreign markets face a particular challenge: to price their
exports in a foreign market when the exchange rate changes. This paper takes on pricing-
to-market using a unique data set that covers rm level monthly trade at great detail. As
opposed to annual trade ows, monthly trade ows bring us closer to the transaction level
where rm decisions are actually made. I nd that the utilization of monthly data does add new
information about the average level of pricing-to-market, and the di¤erences between long-run
pricing-to-market and short-run pricing-to-market. Furthermore, I nd industry di¤erences in
pricing-to-market in terms of the magnitude (zero to complete pricing-to-market) and the timing
(when do rms changes prices), and that pricing-to-market is stronger on high-income markets.
As discussed in detail in the paper, all results are in-line with predictions of several theoretical
contributions to the litterature on pricing-to-market and exchange rate pass-through.

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This paper develops a theory of consumer boycotts. Some consumers care not only about the products they buy but also about whether the firm behaves ethically. Other consumers do not care about the behavior of the firm but yet may like to give the impression of being ethical consumers. Consequently, to affect a firm’s ethical behavior, moral consumers refuse to buy from an unethical firm. Consumers who do not care about ethical behavior may join the boycott to (falsely) signal that they do care. In the firm’s choice between ethical and unethical behavior, the optimality of mixed and pure strategies depends on the cost of behaving ethically. In particular, when the cost is (relatively) low, ethical behavior arises from a prisoners’ dilemma as the firm’s optimal strategy.

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In European Welfare States, low-skilled workers are typically unionized, while the wage formation of high-skilled workers is more competitive. To focus on this aspect, we analyze how flexible international outsourcing and labour taxation affect wage formation, employment and welfare in dual domestic labour markets. Higher productivity of outsourcing, lower cost of outsourcing and lower factor price of outsourcing increase wage dispersion between the high-skilled and low-skilled workers. Increasing wage tax progression of low-skilled workers decreases the wage rate and increases the labour demand of low-skilled workers. It decreases the welfare of lowskilled workers and increases both the welfare of high-skilled workers and the profit of firms.

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Determining the research and development (R&D) boundaries of the firm as the choice between internal, collaborative and external technology acquisition has since long been a major challenge for firms to secure a continuous stream of innovative products or processes. While research on R&D cooperation or strategic alliances is abundant, little is known about the outsourcing of R&D activities to contract research organizations and its implications for innovation performance. This paper investigates the driving forces of external technology sourcing through contract research based on arguments from transaction cost theory and the resource-based view of the firm. Using a large and comprehensive data set of innovating firms from Germany our findings suggest that technological uncertainty, contractual experience and openness to external knowledge sources motivate the choice for engaging in contract research activities. Moreover, we show that internal and external R&D sourcing are complements: the marginal contribution of internal (external) R&D is the larger the more firms spend on external (internal) R&D.

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When a policy maker or an administrator decides on how many and
which of a number of proposed policy measures to implement an
important piece of information is whether the effort is “worthwhile”.
The precise meaning of the word “worthwhile” will depend on the
context. In some cases, the question of whether a policy measure is
worthwhile will be decided on a purely qualitative basis given the
results of the policy measure. In other – and perhaps most – cases
some sort of money evaluation will be attached to the results, and a
total effect in money terms will be used to evaluate the results. This
manual is concerned with the latter case.
Given the large degree of competition between various projects for
public funds, a compelling case for a specific project can be made if a
well carried out cost-benefit-analysis shows a resulting surplus. While
this criterion is obviously not the only one used, it could be an
important factor when preparing policy makers to make decisions
about a specific project.
The basic idea behind cost-benefit-analysis is simple: calculate all
benefits and all the costs associated with a specific effort, subtract the
costs from the benefits while carefully addressing the time profile, and
use the resulting number as an indicator for the economic profitability
of the project. If the result is positive, the project produces an
economic surplus, and if it is negative the project leads to an
economic loss.

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This paper shows how improved health conditions aect fertility decisions and economic growth. Survival rates for children and adults are incorporated into an overlapping generations model featuring endogenous fertility and altruism from workers towards their retired parents. The main nding is that a simultaneous increase in child and adult survival decreases fertility and increases savings and productivity growth. The analysis illustrates the key role of health in the demographic transition.